Year-end inventory

Wow! In just two more days, 2008 will become history and 2009 will jump in with a bang. The islands will rock with songs and popping champagne bottles wrapped in happy laughter as we party through the night. Just think, the year has flown by and in two more days we start a new one. Hello, 2009! Please be better than 2008.

Allow me a few moments of reflection on what the year should mean to us as we sober up from the frolicking. I always consider the end of the old year and the beginning of the New Year a time to take personal inventory. I want to know what I did last year and consider what I intend to do the New Year. Socrates, the old Greek philosopher, once said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

As we examine our life, we will see changes we can make in our personal life. As these personal changes mature, we realize that our new actions are also affecting the community. A community only changes for the better or for worst as its citizens change. It is neither the government nor any outside forces that make a community good or bad. It is its citizens and their attitude toward the community.

Let’s take a personal inventory of what we did or did not do in the past year. Let’s use it as a benchmark to plan for the New Year.
[B] A. Personal Life:[/B] 1. What did I do in 2008 to improve myself?
2. Did I read any books?
3. Did I seek out new ideas and use them?
4. What did I do to improve my relations with my spouse, children, and friends?
5. Did I learn any new hobbies or acquire new interests?
6. What did I do to broaden my mental and spiritual character?
7. What did I do to become a better person?
8. Did I merely consume mountains of meat, rice and beer—thereby expanding only my waist line?
[B] B. Business and Work Life:[/B] 1. Did I study how to improve my business or work habits?
2. Did I seek better relations with my customers and fellow employees.
3. Did I learn about new methods for doing my work smarter, not harder?
4. Did I do the same things throughout the year and just curse the bad business climate?
5. Did I merely complain about the lousy work I have to do?
6. In plain words, what did I do to become a better employer or a better employee?
[B] C. Social and Community Life:[/B] 1. Did I attend meetings of the clubs or associations I belong to?
2. Did I participate in the religious life of the community?
3. Did I reach out and help those less fortunate than me?
4. Did I concern myself with the social problems that beset the community?
5. What charitable and voluntary work did I do in the community?
6. Basically, what did I give of myself to better the society I live in?

These are only a few of the questions we should ask ourselves as we take inventory of what we did the past year. The next question we should ask ourselves: Will I do better this New Year or will I be the same as last year? Will I just continue to vegetate? Will I be able to look in the mirror and be proud of my developments at the end of 2009? Will I feed only my stomach or my brain as well?

A helpful suggestion is to write the New Year’s resolutions on paper and put them into an envelope and seal it. Then at the end of June, open the envelope and read. See if you are still on track to your resolutions. Have you neglected doing what you promised to do or are you on target? When you review them in June, you still have a half a year to improve yourself. Unless you do that, you will soon forget the resolutions and just do nothing to improve yourself.

It’s sad how few of us really take our life seriously. We seem to float in a stream. We don’t seem to care wherever the stream flows or how fast or how slowly it flows. We just drift along in it. Finally when we hit an embankment, we cannot figure out why it happened to us. Then to justify our failure we blame others for our misfortune. We never seem to ask ourselves: “Why didn’t I succeed better in life? What did I fail to do?”

Someone once said to me: Some men die at 25 years old, but are not buried until 75 years old. Are you one of them? It is not too late to wake up and start living.

Success has been defined as the “progressive realization of a worthy goal.” Define your goal and begin your journey toward your “progressive goal.” Take the personal inventory above and listen to the answers truthfully to yourself. Determine that this New Year will the best one you have ever had. A better road await!

Happy New Year! Welcome 2009!

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